🛸 A Colony on Mars by 2050

Today, March 14, SpaceX is attempting its third launch of a Super Heavy rocket along with a Starship spacecraft for interplanetary travel.

SpaceX expects to send people to the Moon and Mars on this spaceship in the next ten years and to have 1 million people living on Mars by 2050.

❓ How realistic is it? Alexandra Vidyuk, founder of Space Ambition, a consulting company in the field of space projects, shared her ideas in an interview with Viktor Osyka.

👽 Why do we need to go to Mars?
It's a "Plan B" for humanity in case of a global catastrophe. Also, starting a settlement on Mars could be a step towards exploring and colonizing the solar system. Getting from Mars to the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn is also relatively easy. Besides, Mars has a lot of rare earth elements, which could become a profitable business.

⌛ How long would it take to get there? Several months to six months, SpaceX is talking about 115 days one-way.

👾 What do we need to bring along?
A 1 million-person Martian colony, as planned by Elon Musk, would require 1 million tons of cargo from Earth.

⚙️ What are the challenges on Mars? They are primarily the engineering ones: creating an in-orbit refueling system, building reactors, developing a closed-loop life support system, growing food, extracting water and fuel from ice.

💰 How much does it cost?
A Mars colony requires about $600 billion investment for over 20 years. The Mars economy could develop 20 years after starting the first colony. It takes another 30 years to become self-sustainable. Turning Mars into a habitable world could take a thousand years. One of the ways is getting oxygen from ice, of which Mars has plenty.

👀 National Geographic's “Mars” series.

🎧 Podcast interview with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos about space exploration

A colony on Mars by 2050?

👍 - it will work
🙈 - unrealistic
🔥 - where can I get a ticket?

@hiaimediaen